Lightyear buys U.S. blockchain start-up Chain; to move
business to Stellar

NEW YORK (Reuters) - San Francisco
technology start-up Chain Inc. has been acquired by Lightyear Corp., a
company focused on the Stellar blockchain, Chain Chief Executive officer
Adam Ludwin said on Monday.

Interstellar, the new company, will migrate Chain's customer base and
products onto Stellar's global public ledger, creating a platform that
will enable organizations to issue, exchange and manage assets, Ludwin
said in an interview with Reuters.

"We were looking for a way to help our customers move the projects that
we have been working on from a private network to a public one," Ludwin
said.

"When we started a few years ago, our customers were not ready for a
public network. Fast forward to three years, they're willingness has
gone up, and the maturity of the public networks has changed a lot," he
added.

Blockchain is a distributed ledger used to underpin cryptocurrencies.

Ludwin declined to disclose financial details of the acquisition, but
said Chain investors were cashed out. The transaction closed last week
in negotiations that started late last year. "The deal turned out to be
a very good outcome for our investors," said Ludwin.

Chain was one of the bigger players in the blockchain space with customers in
the financial services industry, while Stellar is an open network that allows
any currency or asset to be digitally issued, transferred, and exchanged over
the internet.

IBM recently announced that it is launching a payment network based on the
Stellar blockchain.

Chain, a blockchain infrastructure company that enables organizations to build
better financial services from the ground up, raised more than $40 million from
companies such as Visa, Citi Ventures, as well as Nasdaq.

Under the transaction, the Chain and Lightyear brands will be retired. Ludwin
will be the new company's CEO, while Jed McCaleb, co-founder of Stellar
Development Foundation and Lightyear, will be the chief technology officer.

Interstellar will employ 60 people with headquarters in San Francisco and an
office in New York City.

Interstellar's product portfolio will also include StellarX, a recently
announced marketplace for trading assets on Stellar. StellarX is currently in
beta phase and will launch to the public soon.